pdftk *.pdf cat <outfile.pdf> throws java errors (if wildcards regex used)

[ski_phreak]

I have a (k)ubuntu specific error when I run pdftk with wildcards trying to combine (cat) multiple PDFs.

I tested this with a laptop running SolydK (a fork of Mint) and no errors.
I tested this using copies of the files (rather than links) and got the same error.



>pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf
Error: Unexpected Exception in open_reader()
Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at gnu.gcj.runtime.NameFinder.lookup(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.stackTraceString(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)


Combining the same files by typing each one individually bypasses the error (but there's no way I can afford to do so with all the sheetmusic I need to collate.)


>pdftk 01_Handel_Aria_celloBass.pdf 11_Bach_JesuJoyOfMansDesiring_celloBass_p01.pdf 11_Bach_JesuJoyOfMansDesiring_celloBass_p02.pdf Porter_cello_p2-02_NightAndDay.pdf Porter_cello_p2-03_NightAndDay.pdf cat output combined.pdf


I already tried recompiling pdftk from source in case my libraries and paths were different than it expected. I stopped short of recompiloing gcj since that wanted to recompile all of gcc.


>sudo apt-get -b source pdftk
>sudo dpkg -i pdftk_2.01-1_amd64.deb


I couldn't find anything like it out there in web-land. Any ideas?
Any command-line replacement that I could use instead of pdftk?

If it helps any, PDFChain fails with the same error. PDFShuffler works fine, but I really need a scriptable solution, not either gui.

Here's the system specs that may be relevant:
Kubuntu 14.04 LTS



>uname -a
Linux ymir-Dimension-E521 3.13.0-35-generic #62-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 15 01:58:42 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

>dpkg -l kde* = 4:4.13.3 on all the libs and apps.
>dpkg -l pdftk
ii pdftk 2.01-1 amd64 tool for manipulating PDF documents

>dpkg -l gcj*
ii gcj-4.8 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 amd64
ii gcj-4.8-jdk 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 amd64
ii gcj-4.8-jre 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 amd64
ii gcj-4.8-jre-headless 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 amd64
ii gcj-4.8-jre-lib 4.8.2-19ubuntu1 all
(and some earlier uninstalled versions)


Thanks in advance. (Linux users are awesome at helping out. (Beats anything that some Pakistani-outsources Windows call center can ever do...i.e. just blame at the OS, other installed SW, the phase of the moon, PEBCAK, id10T, or anything that might end the call quickest.)

[steeldriver]

That's odd - glob expansion by the shell should happen before the command is run, so as far as pdftk is concerned there should be no difference whether you use *.pdf or list the files by hand - EXCEPT from the nullglob case. Are those EXACTLY the files that you get e.g. when you 'echo *.pdf' in the directory where you're running this from? Or are there many more (possibly too many for the max arg length?)

[ski_phreak]

I see what you're thinking. Some of my filenames run long, and there can be a lot of them.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to matter. A subset of files (PDF originals, before I convert all the scanned JPGs into PDFs) gives the same error with the 5 files:



>echo *.pdf
AngryBirds_bass.pdf AnneOfGreenGables_celloBass.pdf AtLast_celloBass.pdf bach-air-celloBass.pdf UnchainedMelody_bass.pdf




>pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf

Error: Unexpected Exception in open_reader()
Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at gnu.gcj.runtime.NameFinder.lookup(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.stackTraceString(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)
at java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace(libgcj.so.14)

[PopsTheSailor]

So is there any fix to this? I'm not sure I'm following everything. I have a shop manual for my car. It is broken up into about 120 PDFs that I want to combine because I can never find the right manual to start my search when working on my car. I get the exact same error.

What do I need to do?

[Holger_Gehrke]

You might give 'pdfunite' from the poppler-utils package a try.

[steeldriver]

I was able to try pdftk with a * glob on 12.04 and it worked fine - only breaking (gracefully) if the specified output file already existed (i.e. it tries to cat the output.pdf to itself)



~/pdftk_test$ ls
test-10.pdf test-12.pdf test-14.pdf test-16.pdf test-18.pdf test-1.pdf test-21.pdf test-23.pdf test-2.pdf test-4.pdf test-6.pdf test-8.pdf
test-11.pdf test-13.pdf test-15.pdf test-17.pdf test-19.pdf test-20.pdf test-22.pdf test-24.pdf test-3.pdf test-5.pdf test-7.pdf test-9.pdf
~/pdftk_test$
~/pdftk_test$ pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf
~/pdftk_test$
~/pdftk_test$ pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf
Error: The given output filename: combined.pdf
matches an input filename. Exiting.
Errors encountered. No output created.
Done. Input errors, so no output created.


Maybe later versions don't handle that so gracefully - can you confirm that you don't have a combined.pdf file in the directory?